Help with stopping feeding to sleep

[Bellatrix13]

Hi, my baby is 4 months today. I exclusively breastfeed.
currently I feed him to sleep at night and naps. I want to stop doing this as he’s gotten to the stage where if he is full he will fuss and cry and pull away and not want to even suckle for comfort. So it is hard to get him to sleep sometimes.

occasionally he can self settle through sucking his hands, but not very often. He refuses a dummy (used to take it when he was very little but now spits it out straight away). Putting to bed drowsy but awake seems to result in him fully waking up once in bed (he wears a sleep bag at night but not for naps).

he was at one stage starting to sleep for 5 hrs before waking but he is now back to waking every couple of hours and moaning which then turns into crying if I don’t pick him up and offer the boob. I tried to just pat him and reassure him last night but it ended up waking him up properly that I ended up doing a nappy change and going downstairs around 3am so my partner could get a bit of sleep (labour intensive job)

my partner is very sick of him crying at night (I think he thinks if I bottle fed he would sleep more but I honestly don’t believe it would make any difference).

any advice on self soothing/settling / stopping feeding to sleep would be appreciated thanks.

Also, just wanted to add, I co-slept with him in spare room when our room was too hot last week. And that night he slept 5 hrs again before waking!! I don’t want to co-sleep every night as I didn’t enjoy it too much as was worried I might roll and squish him (even though I hardly move in my sleep 😂)

It's the 4 month sleep regression. He's more developmentally aware and beginning to form sleep associations, but too little for proper sleep training. The easiest thing to do (short term) is keep feed2sleep and then sleep train at 6 months. This screws you in the long run.

Keep trying to put him down without a feed. A tired calm baby WILL fall asleep. The problem is making him calm! Do all the "right" things (dark room, no communication/eye contact etc) and you do what you need to keep him calm. This might be rhythmic shushing, white noise, rhythmic patting, all of the above. I had Ewan the Sheep and would pat in time with the heartbeat.

It's grueling. I copped out and kept feeding to sleep, and wish I hadn't. It might take an hour or more for every nap just to get him to fall asleep. But if you keep doing it, the associations will stick and after a few days he'll have forgotten all about feeding to sleep.

And if you need a nap off once in a while, use the carseat or buggy for a break.

@Sbena thanks - I had a go at crying it out today for his nap, I gave in after more than half an hour, I guess I will have to just stick it out more. we’re off on holiday next week so I’ll wait until we are back from there to try properly.
partners agreed to sleep in spare bed tonight so I don’t feel as guilty when ds makes noise at night (though I shouldn’t feel guilty anyway!)

All the best!! Controlled crying is a bit easier on the old mum nerves because you don't leave them to cry and cry: you keep going to check on them every so often. I understand it isn't recommended for 4mo anyway, only 6+

i really do believe if you put them in the right environment and keep them calm, a tired baby will go to sleep!

Aww bless you.

So you have a few options - 1) we did a gradual process of weaning off feeding to sleep but it took 3-4 weeks to work and was tiring.

I basically began to introduce rhymical Patting whilst feeding and shushing. I then began to take baby off earlier in the feed and shush/pay to settle. Then over the course of a week or so began to make the feed shorter and shorter with more patting and shushing. Then eventually moved to not offering the boob and just patting/shushing/cuddling.

Then move to patting and shushing but not lifting out the cot.

Then just shushing and eventually hopefully nothing. This is a much gentler approach but will take a few weeks to see any difference.

2. controlled crying. You need to commit to this process though if you choose it. We were under quite a specialist team for my eldest and was completely reassured that leaving a baby to cry for the purposes of sleep training will NOT damage them. However, for my eldest we still opted for a kinder controlled crying rather than letting either of them cry it out completely.

Bottle feeding is very unlikely to make any difference. Your baby is most likely waking for comfort, reassurance and a cuddle rather than being particularly hungry. A bottle will fill them up but is unlikely to stop any waking. The idea that bottle fed babies sleep better stems from the fact that bottle fed babies often learn to self sooth from an earlier age unlike breastfed babies that rely heavily on boobs for comfort.

Also worth noting that at 4 months they have a sleep regression and this can be hideous. So it's totally normal for you and your husband to be super sleep deprived and desperate!!

Xxx

I could have written this post word for word, so following with interest

@Charis1503 thanks for the tips, I have today started introducing patting and shushing and saying “sleepy time” when feeding for nap and bed. I will try this up until end of august, if I’ve not managed by the end of then he will be just over 5 months and might be time to try the crying methods (really hoping to avoid them as I don’t want the neighbours thinking I am just ignoring (or worse!) my child).